on confidence

I think about this all the time: how would I rate my confidence. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you’ll notice that I go through varying levels of confidence. I’m always aware of where I stand when dealing with my own confidence. Like anyone, there are times when I feel really confident and there are times when I don’t.

I try to take note of both and figure out what was it exactly that affected my confidence. I’m always analyzing. Currently, at this moment I’ll say that my confidence is at a 7. I just got home from a run and took a new route, saw some things I’ve never seen before and my endorphins are going so I’m feeling alright. I’m also lying on the couch right now nursing a crick in the neck that happened while I was washing my face in the shower and it hurts to try to do anything so that’s affecting my confidence in a negative sense. I had plans to go over town to do some work and just get out of my apartment, but in this condition I doubt it’s going to happen now and I worry that as the day goes on I’ll get rather lonely.

Let’s start with the good stuff. My confidence is at its most high when I conquer something. That could be in exercising, checking off every item on my to-do list, going somewhere I’ve never been before. Giving myself a challenge and succeeding. There’s a confidence that comes from not knowing what the outcome will be, doing it anyway and then walking away from it with a new story or experience. Not to mention that feeling of accomplishment. I believe that is where my confidence comes from. I’m confident in my health. I eat well and exercise giving me energy and happiness. When I do those things consistently I find I am the most happy and the most confident. I’m confident when I’m talking about things I know about. When I learn something new and want to share it with someone and they show interest.

Contrarily, I have low confidence when I feel like I’m stuck in a rut; doing the same thing over and over again and not having anything to show for it. Being stagnant, getting stale. That makes me feel self-conscious. When I don’t exercise for more than three days I lose my confidence. For me, it keeps everything in check and it relieves anxiety that I tend to feel. It’s my stress reliever too and when I don’t do it, I get stressed easily and focus too much energy and time to overanalyze stuff that doesn’t need to be analyzed. I feel self-consious about my body when I don’t exercise. I don’t know what that says about my corporeal relationship, but it has an impact on my confidence for sure. I get self-conscious when I talk about myself. I like people to see me in the best light and sometimes I don’t know how to sell myself that way. Actually, I don’t know how to sell myself. At all. So talking about myself makes me question my confidence.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my own confidence it’s that it’s not what I look like, what I do, what I don’t do, or what I’m going to do. It shouldn’t come from what other people think of me. I don’t want to constantly seek approval of others in order to feed my confidence. It comes from the small things that I do and that as long as those things are healthy and beneficial and help build my character then that’s where my own confidence comes from. It makes me sad when I see people who are so self-conscious about what they look like or what they’re doing that they never find what it is that really makes them happy and confident.